Max Lucado Quotes
Most popular Max Lucado Quotes
In the treatment of anxiety, a proper understanding of sovereignty is huge. Anxiety is often the consequence of perceived chaos. If we sense we are victims of unseen, turbulent, random forces, we are troubled.
Success is not defined by position or pay scale but by this: doing the most what you do the best.
The formula is simple: Perceived control creates calm. Lack of control gives birth to fear.
You will never go where God is not.
God will use your struggle for good.
Anxiety is a meteor shower of what-ifs.
Good days. Bad days. God is in all days.
Difficult days demand decisions of faith.
Open every pore of your soul to God's presence.
In God's hands intended evil becomes eventual good.
Each person is given something to do that shows who God is.
Resist the urge to reclaim the problem once you've given it up.
Every challenge, large or small, can equip you for a future opportunity.
What you have in Christ is greater than anything you don't have in life.
He is the Potter; we are the clay. He is the Shepherd; we are the sheep.
How many disasters would be averted if we'd go first, in faith, to Jesus?
![Your anxiety decreases as your understanding of your father [God] increases. - Max Lucado quote.](/img/q/26/1826A-your-anxiety-decreases-as-your-understanding-your-father-god-increases-max-lucado.png)
Your anxiety decreases as your understanding of your father [God] increases.
Gratitude is a dialysis of sorts. It flushes the self-pity out of our systems.
Sustaining grace promises not the absence of struggle but the presence of God.
The presence of anxiety is unavoidable, but the prison of anxiety is avoidable.
Feed your fears, and your faith will starve. Feed your faith, and your fears will.
Anytime we trust an object or activity to give us life and meaning, we worship it.
And when God hears your heart, does he not hear the still-beating heart of his Son?
God gives hope because he gives us himself. He wants us to know we are never alone.
God is at work in each of us, whether we know it or not, whether we want it or not.
Anxiety and fear are cousins but not twins. Fear sees a threat. Anxiety imagines one.
Thankful people focus less on the pillows we lack and more on the privileges we have.
You cannot be anything you want to be. But you can be everything God wants you to be.
Grace is the voice that calls us to change and then gives us the power to pull it off.
We cannot always see what God is doing, but can't we assume he is up to something good?
Deliverance is to the Bible what jazz music is to Mardi Gras—bold, brassy, and everywhere.
Don't get sucked into short-term thinking. Your struggles will not last forever, but you will.
Satan has no recourse to your testimony. Your best weapon against his attacks is a good memory.
The manger invites, even dares us to believe the best is yet to be. And it could all begin today.
The sinful nature is all about self: pleasing self, promoting self, preserving self. Sin is selfish.
God is always near us. Always for us. Always in us. We may forget him, but God will never forget us.
I don't have an easy solution or a magic wand. I have found something—Someone—far better. God himself.
God invites us to enter Canaan. There is only one condition. We must turn our backs on the wilderness.
The secret of survival in enemy territory? Remember. Remember what God has done. Remember whose you are.
Jesus did not enter the world to help us save ourselves. He entered the world to save us from ourselves.
When you do the most what you do the best, you put a smile on God's face. What could be better than that?
When God gives an assignment, he also gives the skill. Study your skills, then, to reveal your assignment.
It's not the absence of storms that sets us apart. It's whom we discover in the storm: an unstirred Christ.
Father, you are good. I need help. Heal me and forgive me. They need help. Thank you. In Jesus' name, amen.
If God can make a prince out of a prisoner, don't you think he can make something good out of your struggle?
God calmed the fears of Isaiah, not by removing the problem, but by revealing his divine power and presence.
When fear shapes our lives, safety becomes our god. When safety becomes our god, we worship the risk-free life.
Confession, you see, is not a punishment for sin; it is an isolation of sin so it can be exposed and extracted.
God surrounds us like the Pacific surrounds an ocean floor pebble. He is everywhere: above, below, on all sides.
Why did God go so far? He wants you to know that he gets you. He understands how you feel and has faced what you face.
Use your uniqueness (what you do) to make a big deal out of God (why you do it) every day of your life (where you do it).
The meaning of life. The wasted years of life. The poor choices of life. God answers the mess of life with one word: grace.
We speak. He listens. He speaks. We listen. This is prayer in its purest form. God changes his people through such moments.
This season in which you find yourself may puzzle you, but it does not bewilder God. He can and will use it for his purpose.
Don't compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.
Fear creates a form of spiritual amnesia. It dulls our miracle memory. It makes us forget what Jesus has done and how good God is.
Our Promised Land isn't a physical territory; it is a spiritual reality. It's not real estate but a real state of the heart and mind.
Fear of insignificance creates the result it dreads, arrives at the destination it tries to avoid, facilitates the scenario it disdains.
To sin is to state, "God, I do not want you to be my king. I prefer a kingless kingdom. Or, better still, a kingdom in which I am king."
Compassion matters to God. This is the time for service, not self-centeredness. Cancel the pity party. Love the people God brings to you.
God's healing includes a shift away from the cramped world of grudge toward spacious ways of grace, away from hardness toward forgiveness.
Gratitude always leaves us looking at God and away from dread. It does to anxiety what the morning sun does to valley mist. It burns it up.
To change the way a person responds to life, change what a person believes about life. The most important thing about you is your belief system.
This verse is a call, not to a feeling, but to a decision and a deeply rooted confidence that God exists, that he is in control, and that he is good.
Do you recite your woes more naturally than you do heaven's strength? If so, no wonder life is tough. You're assuming God isn't in this crisis. He is.
God never called you to be anyone other than you. But he does call on you to be the best you you can be. The big question is, at your best, who are you?
Does God guarantee the absence of struggle and the abundance of strength? Not in this life. But he does pledge to reweave your pain for a higher purpose.
Unbelief: attempting to help others without calling on Jesus. Belief: pounding on God's door at midnight. Doing whatever it takes to present people to Jesus.
Eight steps. Pray, first. Easy, now. Act on it. Compile a worry list. Evaluate your worry categories. Focus on today. Unleash a worry army. Let God be enough. P-E-A-C-E-F-U-L.
Look back over your life. What have you consistently done well? What have you loved to do? Stand at the intersection of your affections and successes and find your uniqueness.
See your desires as gifts to heed rather than longings to suppress, and you'll feel the same joy. So go ahead; reflect on your life. What have you always done well and loved to do?
Prayer is conversation with God while driving to work or awaiting an appointment or before interacting with a client. Prayer can be the internal voice that directs the external action.
To be saved by grace is to be saved by him — not by an idea, doctrine, creed, or church membership, but by Jesus himself, who will sweep into heaven anyone who so much as gives him the nod.
Storms are coming your way. Winds will howl, your boat will be tossed, and you will have a choice. Will you hear Christ or the crisis? Heed the promises of Scripture or the noise of the storm?
Don't equate the presence of God with a good mood or a pleasant temperament. God is near whether you are happy or not. Sometimes you have to take your feelings outside and give them a good talking-to.
Fear, mismanaged, leads to sin. Sin leads to hiding. Since we've all sinned, we all hide, not in bushes, but in eighty-hour workweeks, temper tantrums, and religious busyness. We avoid contact with God.
For when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be strong in character and ready for anything (James 1: 3 – 4 NLT).
Don't let the crisis paralyze you. Don't let the sadness overwhelm you. Don't let the fear intimidate you. To do nothing is the wrong thing. To do something is the right thing. And to believe is the highest thing.
Ponder your achievements less; ponder Christ's more. Spend less time on your throne and more at his cross. Brag on his work, not yours. You are valuable, but you aren't invaluable. It is Christ who matters, not us.
You'll get through this. It won't be painless. It won't be quick. But God will use this mess for good. In the meantime don't be foolish or naive. But don't despair either. With God's help you will get through this.
Prayer is simply a heartfelt conversation between God and his child. My friend, he wants to talk with you. Even now, as you read these words, he taps at the door. Open it. Welcome him in. Let the conversation begin.
God uses every possible means to communicate with you. The wonders of nature call to you. The promises and prophecies of Scripture speak to you. God himself reaches out to you. He wants to help you find your way home.
The key to spiritual growth is not increased church attendance or involvement in spiritual activities. People don't grow in Christ because they are busy at church. They grow in Christ when they read and trust their Bibles.
Trust God's hold on you more than your hold on God. His faithfulness does not depend on yours. His performance is not predicated on yours. His love is not contingent on your own. Your candle may flicker, but it will not expire.
God didn't overlook your sins, lest he endorse them. He didn't punish you, lest he destroy you. He instead found a way to punish the sin and preserve the sinner. Jesus took your punishment, and God gave you credit for Jesus' perfection.
If you see your troubles as nothing more than isolated hassles and hurts, you'll grow bitter and angry. Yet if you see your troubles as tests used by God for his glory and your maturity, then even the smallest incidents take on significance.
Sometimes the challenge is just too much. ... You just run out of fight. Life has a way of taking the life out of us. The book of Joshua is in the Bible for such seasons. It dares us to believe our best days are ahead of us. God has a Promised Land for us to take.
To wait, biblically speaking, is not to assume the worst, worry, fret, make demands, or take control. Nor is waiting inactivity. Waiting is a sustained effort to stay focused on God through prayer and belief. To wait is to "rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him;... not fret".
That's why the most stressed-out people are control freaks. They fail at the quest they most pursue. The more they try to control the world, the more they realize they cannot. Life becomes a cycle of anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure; anxiety, failure. We can't take control, because control is not ours to take.
In Canaan you do not fight for victory. You fight from victory. In the wilderness you strive. In Canaan you trust. In the wilderness you seek God's attention. In Canaan you already have God's favor. In the wilderness you doubt your salvation. In Canaan you know you are saved. You move from wanting-to-have to believing you already do.
God will do that for you. Your Jericho is your fear. Your Jericho is your anger, bitterness, or prejudice. Your insecurity about the future. Your guilt about the past. Your negativity, anxiety, and proclivity to criticize, overanalyze, or compartmentalize. Your Jericho is any attitude or mind-set that keeps you from joy, peace, or rest.
Fear, at its center, is a perceived loss of control. When life spins wildly, we grab for a component of life we can manage: our diet, the tidiness of a house, the armrest of a plane, or, in many cases, people. The more insecure we feel, the meaner we become. We growl and bare our fangs. Why? Because we are bad? In part. But also because we feel cornered.
Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs, and don't forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4: 6 – 7 TLB)
Grace is not blind. It sees the hurt full well. But grace chooses to see God's forgiveness even more. It refuses to let hurts poison the heart. "See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many" (Heb. 12: 15 NIV). Where grace is lacking, bitterness abounds. Where grace abounds, forgiveness grows.
Grace is God as heart surgeon, cracking open your chest, removing your heart — poisoned as it is with pride and pain — and replacing it with his own. Rather than tell you to change, he creates the change. Do you clean up so he can accept you? No, he accepts you and begins cleaning you up. His dream isn't just to get you into heaven but to get heaven into you.
As one writer observed, "Many Christians view their conversion as something like a car wash: You go in a filthy clunker; you come out with your sins washed away—a cleansed clunker." But conversion is more than a removal of sin. It is a deposit of power. It is as if your high-mileage, two-cylinder engine was extracted and a brand-new Ferrari engine was mounted in your frame.
Because of Bethlehem, I have a Savior in heaven. Christmas begins what Easter celebrates. The child in the cradle became the King on the cross. And because he did, there are no marks on my record. Just grace. His offer has no fine print. He didn't tell me, "Clean up before you come in." He offered, "Come in and I'll clean you up." It's not my grip on him that matters but his grip on me. And his grip is sure.
This season in which you find yourself may puzzle you, but it does not bewilder God.
Don't equate the presence of God with a good mood or a pleasant temperament. God is near whether you are happy or not.
Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything; tell God your needs and don't forget to thank him for his answers. If you do this, you will experience God's peace, which is far more wonderful than the human mind can understand. His peace will keep your thoughts and your hearts quiet and at rest as you trust in Christ Jesus. (Phil. 4: 6 – 7 TLB)
